


Banquet, Take Two: Barcelona

by Beccalouise13



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: After episode 12, Alcohol, Chris is sex on legs, Crack, Drunk Yurio, Grand Prix Final Banquet, Innuendo, M/M, Phichit is a gift to us all, Pole Dancing, Pray for Yakov, Victor is an arsonist, Yakov has to endure some shit, too much champagne, yurio is a little shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-14 02:36:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9154189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beccalouise13/pseuds/Beccalouise13
Summary: Hi! I'm Yuri Katsuki, and I think I'm the only one who doesn't remember the events of last year's banquet. But this year's going to be different; there'll be no dignity-disgracing photos, no stripper's pole and no grinding up against my coach with my neck-tie wrapped around my head!Famous last words...Welcome to this year's Grand Prix Final's banquet. Face beet red - let the madness ensue!





	1. First Post-Skate

“My s-suit. Where’s my suit?!”

  
Hi! I’m Yuri Katsuki, and right now I’m stood in a hotel room after my first successful Grand Prix Final staring at an empty wardrobe. I say successful, I didn’t actually win, but I did beat my coach’s long-standing free skate world record, which deserves celebrating, I’d say. Only, I can’t celebrate anything without the suit that I brought with me for the banquet. What am I supposed to do? Turn up in front of all the coaches and skaters and sponsors at the uber-formal event butt-ass naked? I really can’t rehash the same programme two years in a row….

  
Scrambling frantically around my only-so-many-places-to-hide-a-suit room, I try to recall the garment’s last metaphorical footsteps. I know I packed it in my suitcase before I left Japan. Know, because I had to strip the damn thing off Makkachin after Victor decided that it was only good enough for a dog to wear. Actually, I think he said it wasn’t even good enough for a dog to wear, but that didn’t stop him squeezing Makka’s huge furry legs through the jacket-sleeves. Oh man, when I do eventually find it I’ll have to spend about half an hour trying to pick all the dog hairs off the fabric. Maybe they’ll have scotch tape at the reception desk so I can de-fuzz the thing quicker. Or Chris might have some body tape I could borrow.

  
There are sirens outside. On the beach front? That’s odd…

  
“Yuri!” The door bursts open and Victor’s standing there, already preened and polished and ready to go. But then he’s been in a suit all day.

  
“Victor, have you seen my suit?” I ask, opening and closing the wardrobe door to pantomime my search. “I can’t find it anywhere.” Granted, I’ve only checked as far as the wardrobe and my suitcase, but where else would a suit wander off to?

  
He adjusts his cufflinks with a half-smile. “Yes,” he replies.

  
A pause. “Yes, you’ve seen it?” I ask, already aware that the answer isn’t going to be as straight-forward as I’d like. He tips his head to the side so his smile takes over his face.

  
“Of course I’ve seen it,” he grins. “I had to carry it all the way outside to burn it on the beach.”

  
I can feel my eyes grow as large as beach balls as the colour from my face splashes onto the floor. “YOU WHAT?” Suddenly the sirens seem deafening as I squash my nose against the window and see a group of red-clad firemen rushing to extinguish a smouldering heap of what used to be my suit on the sand. I – I liked that suit. I’ve had it since I was eighteen.

  
An arm sneaks around my waist and a pale Russian nose presses against the glass as close to mine as its owner can manage. “The fire brigade didn’t have to come,” Victor sighs, fogging up the window with his warm breath. “I deliberately started my bonfire on the beach so the tide would wash away any trace of that hideous suit and tie and we could all pretend like it never existed. I should go apologise for wasting the time of the emergency services.”

  
“YOU BURNT MY TIE TOO?!” He ignores my question, drawing a heart on the window with my initials inside it before skipping from the room, whistling the tune from JJ’s short programme. I don’t think about following him – I’m still in the chintzy outfit that I wore for my exhibition skate for Christ’s sake – but a question burning inside me as much as my suit is on the beach drives me towards the open doorway.

  
“Victor,” I shout after him, though he’s already too far away to hear, “what am I going to wear?”

  
“I liked what you wore last year,” an unctuous voice simpers behind me. I try to back up into my room without making eye-contact but I just hit the wall. Ow! “You know, what you were wearing after about seventeen flutes of champagne.” Oh God. There is so much wrong with what is happening right now. It’s Chris -- of course it’s Chris. I turn around to see him just standing in the corridor, hip jutting out to one side, wearing nothing but a leopard-print thong and that flower crown that Minako gave him. And he’s dragging a pole behind him. A huge-ass metal STRIPPER’S POLE.

 

“What are you doing?” I manage to squeak, trying hard to look at anything that isn’t Chris’s bulging Eros.

  
“Just getting prepared for tonight’s festivities,” he winks, running his fingers through his hair. “I take my pole anywhere you’re going to be, Yuri.”

  
I’m not sure if I should be insulted or flattered. I make an exhaling sound that isn’t any word in any language – “ehheh” – as he continues dragging his pole in my direction. It’s like a horror movie. I’m fumbling on the wall behind me, trying to locate the open door to my room, while the killer takes slow, naked steps towards me, carrying an offensive weapon both over his shoulder and in his pants. I find a handle – is it my room? Before I can twist it, it’s flung open from the other side and I tumble backwards, narrowly avoiding a very small and very angry prima-ballerina.

  
“What are you doing, pork cutlet bowl?” Yurio rages, kicking me back out into Chris’s naked path. “And what’s all the racket abou- OH GOD MY EYES!” When he catches sight of the pole-touting, thong-wearing, sex-sweating skater, he puts one arm over his face to shield himself from the view while wafting the other one around in the air like Chris is some bug he can just swat away. “Put it away old man. You’re ruining leopard print for me!”

  
He’s wearing his gold medal – I’ll be surprised if he ever takes it off – and a gold suit. Where’d he get that from? With his golden hair to boot he looks like an academy award, or like Victor touched him. The news articles online are already reading ‘Like Midas, everything Victor Nikivorov touches turns to gold,’ what with him choreographing two world record breaking programmes and everything. I wonder if he’s managed to stomp out the remains of my suit yet. Or whether he’s been arrested for arson.

  
“Don’t pretend like you’re not getting on this during the banquet, little Yuri,” Chris pouts.

  
“I hope you mean the pole, old man.”

  
“I remember your dance-routines from last year’s banquet. Though this time around you should consider adding more pole and less clothes.” He winks again and Yurio’s face drops.

  
“I’m fifteen years old, asshole! That’s not a dance routine, that’s a felony!”

  
Chris laughs and keeps walking, his pole cutting a groove in the carpet as he does. “Three more months, little Yuri, and then I’ll initiate you into the senior division properly.” Yurio leaps to one side to escape Chris’s touch and almost goes tumbling straight over the bannister and into the open stair-well. At least he makes it out of Chris’s reach – everything he touches turns into something else – I’m not so fortunate. “If you see your scrumptious coach, Yuri,” he purrs, running his free hand down my cheek, “let him know I need his help erecting my gigantic pole in the banquet hall.”

  
“His…help?” I stutter, still crumpled in a heap on the floor where Yurio kicked me; Chris’s fingers entwined around a strand of my hair which I’m now going to have to cut off; his Eros so very uncomfortably close to me.

  
“Oui. I need to use his power drill to screw this into the ceiling. We don’t want any casualties now, do we?” And with that he continues on his way, unperturbed by the stairs as his pole just thuds down each step in turn.

  
“That was uncomfortable,” I mutter when Chris is out of earshot. I’m going for polite, when really it’s going to take a lobotomy to erase the image of his tanned buttocks bouncing down the stairs from my mind.

  
“Da. I feel violated,” Yurio agrees, before sauntering into the open door to my room.

  
“Hey,” I scramble up off of the floor, wincing only slightly at the sound of metal crashing several floors below me. “That’s my room.” He’s stood in the middle of it with his hands on his hips, chest plumed out, golden everything glittering.

  
“So this is what the room of a silver medallist looks like,” he laughs.

  
I roll my eyes. “It’s exactly the same as yours, Yurio.”

  
“Net,” he laughs louder, throwing himself onto one of the twin beds and taking his tiger-covered phone from his pocket. “Mine’s painted gold because I’m the Grand Prix champion.”

  
I hover by the door, deciding if I keep my hand on the handle the taunting little punk might take the hint and leave. “Unless you’ve got Otabek in there with overalls and a pot of gold paint,” I say, making a very obvious gesture into the hallway, “I assure you they’re exactly the same.”

  
“It’s smaller than mine,” he continues, scrolling through his phone and ignoring me. “Like the silver medal’s smaller than the gold medal.”

  
“Ookay, I have to get changed now so if you could just run along -”

  
“Get changed into what? You’re suit’s been cremated by your coach.”

  
A pause as his grin extends beyond the edges of his face. “How do you know about that?”

  
“I saw Victor walking down to the beach with it in one hand, a box of matches in the other, singing ‘I’m going to burn Yuri’s hideous suit.’” I screech something that resembles ‘Whaaat?’ as my face blanches beyond my control. “Plus Phichit filmed him burning it and uploaded it to Instagram. Hashtag Grand Prix Final. Hashtag goodbye hideous suit. He even says some words.” He waves the phone screen round in the air before tossing it underarm to me. I try all thumbs to catch it and Yurio shouts something in angry Russian when it comes close to hitting the floor.

  
“ _So long you abomination to fashion_ ,” Victor grins as I press play on the video. He’s stood on the white-sand beach with a match held above him like a less-grandiose version of the Olympic torch he carried two years ago. Phichit’s phone wobbles as he laughs.

  
_“Man Victor, do you not think Yuri’s going to miss it?_ ” I hear the traitor snicker behind the camera.

  
_“How could anyone miss something so offensively ugly?”_ Victor replies as the match drops in slo-mo and my precious suit starts smoking worse than Victor’s cooking.

  
_“What’s he going to put on himself tonight?”_

  
I strain to hear Victor’s reply over the crackle of the flames. _“Me if I can help it -”_ I stop the recording there, blushing so furiously that it feels like my face is made of literal fire. Yurio’s still smirking, chuntering something about how cheap the suit must have been to ignite so quickly, as someone else sidles into my getting-increasingly crowded room.

  
“The room’s done, Yuri,” they say. We both turn at the sound of our shared name, though my glasses have misted up so much with the heat from my face that I can’t see who it is. Kinda looks like Otabek though…kinda looks like he’s wearing overalls…

  
Yurio leaps off the bed, suddenly angry. “I told you to keep that between us, Otabek,” he snaps, trying in vain to push the significantly-taller-than-him newcomer out of my room. “See you later, pork cutlet bowl,” he says before he slams the door behind him. “Hope you find more to wear than Chris did.”

(“What did you do that for?”  
“It’s finished, I thought you’d like to know.”  
“But now pork cutlet bowl – EEEEEE!!! LOOK AT THE ALL THE GOLD!!! Quick, take a picture of me with my medal. Eurgh it’s still wet…”)

  
By the time I’ve rubbed my glasses clean, they’re both gone, though there are traces of gold paint smeared on my door…


	2. Second Post-Skate

I guess I should do _something_ to get ready for tonight’s banquet. Shave? Brush my hair? Anything that doesn’t require the charcoaled scraps of fabric that seagulls are probably regurgitating right now. I start unbuttoning the translucent jacket of my exhibition skate costume with a sigh. Victor must have something else for me to wear, right? He wouldn’t _really_ just burn my clothes with complete and utter disregard for the fact that I didn’t bring another suit with me. _What if he really is planning to drape himself around me like some kind of fox-fur stole?_ It wouldn’t be the first time he’s decided that naked embraces constitute as acceptable public behaviour…

Voices fill up the corridor outside and I quickly re-button my jacket and burrito a bedsheet around myself for added protection. What if it’s Chris returning? Attracted to the sound of clothing being removed?

“So you’re really going to compete at Nationals _and_ be Japanese Yuri’s coach?” I hear Yakov growl in throaty Russian. I can only just about understand him, but I’ve heard Victor say ‘compete’ and ‘Nationals’ in Russian enough times to get the gist. Helpfully, my coach replies in English.

“I know, it’s going to be difficult even for me, impossible for anyone less accomplished.” Through the peephole in the door, Yakov’s eye roll doesn’t need translating. “So Yuri will be coming to stay in St Petersburg with me so he can train at our rink.” _I WILL?!?!_

“AERH?” Yakov’s face turns an aneurysm shade of puce and his jaw slackens while I flatten myself so close against the peephole they can probably see my retina on the other side. “And how do you think our Yuri’s going to take that?” I watch Victor’s reaction closely as Yakov reaches for the keycard in his pocket, poised to enter Yurio’s adjacent room.

“Yurio’s matured a lot this season, Yakov,” Victor nods as his old coach opens the door. “You don’t give him enough credit for how much he’s…” the door’s opened, “…grown.” A pause. I squint hard to see what’s happening. The keycard has fallen out of Yakov’s hands, Victor’s eyes have dilated to mere specks, and a strong smell of paint fumes makes a passing maid collapse in a fit of sneezes and coughs and curdles the milk on her trolley.

Silence. More silence. I crack open my own door ever so slightly when I’m suddenly thrown back inside by the force of Yakov’s roar:

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!” he screams.

“Wow!” is all Victor adds. I sneak to his side to witness the full extent of the devastation.

Yurio’s room is gold. He really wasn’t lying. From the walls, to the carpet, over the mirrors and the curtains, in the bathroom, over the lampshades, everything is dripping with a thick, gold lacquer. The bootleg painting of some potted eucalyptus above his bed? Now a gold square. The actual eucalyptus plant in the corner of the room? Gold leaves. And Yurio’s just bouncing between the two twin beds with a kind of dizzying excitement I’ve only ever seen tiger sweatshirts invoke from him. He’s probably high off of all the paint fumes.

“It’s gold, old man,” he sings, jumping, jumping, “gold because I won the Grand Prix final!”

I don’t understand what Yakov’s saying now – he’s spewing Russian thick and fast – but I’ve got a feeling I don’t want to. It’s loud, it’s angry, and oh god the old man’s going to go into cardiac arrest. DOES ANYONE KNOW CPR?!

“Okie dokie,” Victor says, backing away, “this is all you, Yakov.”

“VITYA!” Yakov roars, “TALK TO HIIIMM!”

“I’m just going to take this,” Victor scurries past his old coach to grab Otabek, who’s currently sat bemused at the top of one of the beds Yurio’s dancing between, and drag him from the room. “Udachi Yakov.” He slams the door shut and the sounds of Yurio’s maniacal laughing and Yakov’s maniacal yelling are swallowed up by the silence in the corridor. The now-asthmatic maid staggers to her feet and continues trundling her trolley.

“If I were you Otabek Altin, I’d stay away from your boyfriend for a while,” Victor grins, brushing down the shoulders of the Kazakhstani skater.

“My what?” Otabek’s ears turn pink.

“At least until the banquet,” Victor ignores his obvious embarrassment, waggling his finger with a perverse glee. “That was not Yakov’s happy face.”

“Does he have a happy face?” I mutter, retreating back into my room to flush the paint fumes from my nostrils.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to go attend to mine.” My turn to go beet red again as I medusa mid-step.

“Your boyfriend?” Otabek doesn’t smirk, because the guy doesn’t smirk, but if he did, he would be smirking right now. I can feel his eyes boring into my back.

“Ciao,” Victor waves, pushing me into our room and closing the door. A picture rattles off the wall when we enter and I’m guessing Yurio’s throwing things next door. His phone, the paint pot, the last tattered shreds of Yakov’s sanity.

Now’s the time to ask about the suit. I speak loudly to be heard over the sweary Russian coming from next door.

“Victor -” something’s thrust into my back before I can continue though, and terrifying images of Chris and his pole quadruple lutz into my mind. He couldn’t have snuck back into the room while I was out, could he? No, I’m being paranoid - you hear when Chris is coming.

It’s just a box. _Phew!_ Victor makes sure the sharpest corner of it pokes into the small of my back repeatedly until I turn around. As I do, it snags a hole in my exhibition costume. His eyes well up and he lets out a shriek only dogs can hear (somewhere in Japan, Makka looks up,) but he swears he’ll fix it later. After all, our first his and his costumes can’t be ruined – they’re going to be framed and hung in the temple, he cries.

“This is why you burnt my clothes?” It’s more of a statement than a question as I carefully unfold an Armani suit from the furls of black tissue paper.

“Call it a late birthday present, or an early Christmas present,” he winks. “Put it on.” He’s already sat at the room’s desk with a sewing machine I didn’t know he’d brought (or owned) set up in front of him, delicately repairing his damage.

“Victor, this must have a cost a fortune!” My hands tremble as I hold the new suit up before me. The tie alone is worth more than I am! There are so many zeros on the end of every price tag. Have I ever held anything so expensive in my life?!

“Put it on,” he insists again, holding my exhibition skate jacket up to the light, almost good-as-new. “If you can seduce me in your Eros costume, who knows how I’ll react to you in that.” There’s something strangely sensual about the way he snaps his thread in two with his teeth and I scramble to get out of my trousers. The moment’s kind of dampened by a second picture clattering onto the floor though, and a giant crack suddenly appears up the wall as Yurio leaves his room with a colossal SLAM! and a bark of: “I HATE YOU, YOU OLD GEEZER!” It’s swiftly followed by a ringing “OTABEEEEEEEEK!” Otabek’s probably wishing he’d ridden his motorbike down any other alleyway in any other city right about now.

“Yurio’s still alive then,” Victor grins.

I continue wriggling out of my costume to slip into my new suit. _So silky. So soft._ It’s only after I’m buttoned in and zipped up that I notice the wash label at the bottom of the jacket.

“Victor, if this suit is new, why does it say _property of Victor Nikivorov_ in it?” I ask, holding the label out to him so the thick black pen marks are visible.

“Because I wrote it there. I couldn’t get it printed across the shirt in time.” _What?_

“You’re going to take it back after I’ve worn it tonight?” I don’t know what he intends to do with it – anything that’s such a snug fit on me wouldn’t fit a sixteen year old Victor, never mind a six foot one. Still looking down at the calligraphic writing on the wash label between my fingers, I don’t realise Victor’s got up and gotten close to me. _So close._

“It’s not the suit that’s mine,” he whispers, one hand on my chin, the other resting on my hip. His thumb traces lazy circles against my skin and I have to remind myself I only have this pair of trousers to wear. His voice gets lower. “But what’s inside it.”

“A little louder, guys, I’m not sure the camera got that last bit.” WHAT THE?!

“PHICHIT!” I whip my head away from Victor and he’s just sat there – Phitchit – against the railings of our open balcony door, his back against the metal, his stupid hamster-emblazoned phone pointed towards me and Victor, one eye squinted so he can get the best focus for what I assume is a video.

“Oh, hey Yuri!” he smiles, innocent-like, as though he hasn’t been conducting his own private peep-show through the curtains! “Victor, could you move to one side too so I can get Yuri in shot?”

“Oh, sure thing.” VICTOR!!!!

“Great. As you were.” Phichit just carries on recording and Victor actually leans back in towards me as if the moment never happened. I shake my head rapidly wondering if I’m been cast in some sort of post-skate-porno!

“Phichit,” I step away from Victor and he leans too far forward, toppling face first onto my bed (“Ow!”) “What are you doing?”

“Recording a reaction video to Victor giving you your new suit, of course. He said if it was good enough I could upload it to Instagram.” His eyes light up – a kaleidoscope of tears and joy – at the thought.

“You were in on this?” I screech to Victor, who’s still face-planted to the bed, clutching his nose. And then: “You recorded me changing?!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll edit that bit out,” Phichit smiles, who despite everything is still bloody recording! “Though some of my followers might like to see it -”

“I’ll take it,” Victor’s suddenly up and in front of the phone, “I have a folder.”

“A folder?” I ask.

“Not very quick, is he?”

Victor winks. “I’m counting on it.”

“Hold on, you guys –“

The door’s thrown open suddenly and I make to cover every orifice on my body out of reflex as Chris’s barely-clothed self is back, though now he’s holding a thrashing angry Yurio with an outstretched arm. (“PUT ME DOWN YOU PERVERT!”)

“Victor,” he purrs, “I found your little cock-block wandering around downstairs without a babysitter.” (“COCK-BLOCK?! I’M THE GOLD MEDAL WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX FINAL!”) "I thought you might be missing your spare part."

“Oh hello, Chris. Just set him down on the bed and I’ll find him a colouring book.” (“COLOURING BOOK?! I’M THE GOLD MEDAL WINNER OF THE GRAND PRIX FINAL!”)

“Why’s your wall got a crack in it?” Phichit asks, entering the room and putting his phone down at last.

“The gold medal winner of the Grand Prix Final threw a tantrum,” I sigh. “And his phone.”

Chris makes to toss Yurio, but Russia’s tiniest tiger latches on and makes to bite him, Victor emerges from inside his secret Mary Poppins suitcase with two colouring books and a pack of crayolas, Phichit’s taking a picture of the crack in the wall - my phone buzzes with the Instagram notification, and then suddenly JJ’s in my doorway with his girlfriend twisting his fingers in that unnatural way which I’ve only just realised makes two Js…

…Annnnnd that’s our cue to head downstairs to the banquet. Yurio makes to kick JJ's head as he passes, still swinging teeth-first from Chris's arm.


	3. Third Post-Skate

Yurio’s vanished almost as soon as we’ve entered the banquet hall – which is impressive for someone glittering and shining as brightly as one of the glass chandeliers hung precariously above our heads. He’s left an obnoxious mark on Chris’s arm though.

“The little pussycat’s scarred me for life,” Chris laments, dabbing a finger against the teeth marks starting to bleed on his skin. “I should go warn Otabek how aggressive he is before he’s in too deep.”

There are so many people already crowding on the red carpet and around the gilded walls, (almost feels like we’re late) – so many people I don’t know, though I can spot the ones I do without much difficulty. Michele is screaming something at Emil that sounds very much like stay away from my sister you creep, though Sala, a champagne flush already visible on her olive cheeks, doesn’t really seem to be minding the attention. Lila Baranovskaya is shouting just as loudly down her phone (“what? A paint scraper? Have you lost your mind old man?”) while Mila, having flung her own gold medal around Otabek’s neck and stroking it far too close to his chest, has a scowl as deep as her rink mate’s when Chris interrupts them with his pock-marked arm.

Was that…I think I just caught the gold shimmer of Yurio’s suit over by the champagne table, but before I can check, JJ’s pushed past me and is demanding the attention of the room, apologising for only achieving bronze at the final and promising to do better at the Four Continents with the support of his adoring fans. People clap, people do his JJ sign, there’s an impromptu rendition of Theme of King JJ, started by Emil and Victor no less, and no-one’s questioning why he’s stood on a chair, on the champagne table, but then no-one seems overly distracted by the stripper’s pole that’s been bolted to the floor and the ceiling right by one of the chandeliers either. There’s sawdust around the base of it from the ceiling or the floorboards or both. We’re probably not going to be invited back to this hotel…

“Yuri,” Victor sings, appearing by my side suddenly with a tray cramped with champagne flutes, full and fizzing and a mocking reminder of the humiliation they led me into last year. “Have a drink!” He picks one up and pushes it into my ribcage.

“No no no, I probably shouldn’t Victor,” I say waving it away with both hands. “You remember what happened last year.”

Victor winks. “You bet I do.” Before I got fall-on-my-ass, grind-against-a-skating-god, get-naked-and-straddle-a-Swiss-nymphomaniac-on-a-stripper’s-pole drunk last year, I seem to vaguely remember Celestino introducing me to people: sponsors, people in suits with the air of the wealthy around them, you know, trying to further my career; all my coach this year seems to care about is getting me fall-on-my-ass, grind-against-a-skating-god, get-naked-and-straddle-a-Swiss-nymphomaniac-on-a-stripper’s-pole drunk again.

He takes one of the glasses himself and clinks it against no-one’s before downing it quickly. Chris comes to help him finish the tray off after a second or two, complaining that Otabek’s in denial and he’ll be wishing he heeded his advice when he’s hobbling out of his hotel room like a cripple with haemorrhoids tomorrow morning. I helpfully remind him that Yurio’s only fifteen, but age is just a number to Chris.

“Oh Yuri, I was only thirteen when I -” I pick a glass from Victor’s tray immediately and neck it as quickly as he did to a) appease them both in the hope that this conversation will terminate right here, and b) block out whatever filth Chris is spewing in case the conversation doesn’t terminate right here. At least if I do get as drunk as I did last year, this conversation will just be a vague, fuzzy, nightmarish memory.

“Yay! Yuri’s drinking!” Victor throws both his arms up in the air so the tray almost flips out of his grasp and champagne sloshes everywhere. At least the flutes are more like shots now.

He and Chris take another each and clink them against each other’s before racing to see who can finish theirs first. Victor offers me a second while Chris balls his fist against his lips to try and prevent himself from vomiting, (“never drink with a Russian,” he coughs), but I decline again. Victor smiles, tips a third glass into his mouth and gestures me to his side. I do as instructed. As I get close to him though, he slides his free hand behind my neck (the hand not balancing the tray) and pulls me in even closer, forcing the champagne from his mouth into mine as he parts my lips with his tongue. I immediately pull away and spit champagne all over my very expensive and very new suit. Victor drops the tray as he and Chris double over themselves in their hysteria.

“I didn’t get mine offered to me like that,” Chris whines, almost on the floor he’s laughing so hard.

“Well, maybe not this year, Chris,” Victor winks, and I’m almost glad for Phichit’s interruption so I don’t have to find out the meaning behind that veiled reply.

“Did you and Victor just kiss? AGAIN?” Phichit asks, flushed and wide-eyed from either champagne or the excitement of another Instagrammable moment – it’s difficult to tell.

“No no no, we were just, well, err -” since my face is the same colour as the carpets right now, I’m pretty sure I could just blend into one and vanish, since the truth about what just happened – that my coach was transfusing champagne from his mouth into mine via our lips – is even more mortifying.

“I’ve got it on camera if you’re struggling to find a name for it,” Phichit smirks, thrusting his hamster-cam under my nose, (he doesn’t let me touch it though – Phichit’s phone is strictly off limits in case anyone tries to delete anything incriminating).

“Of course you do,” I sigh, watching as he races through about a hundred photos of the banquet we’ve only been at for approximately half an hour.

“Wait, go back to that one,” I say, scrolling back to a picture of Michele on one knee in front of his sister. (“DON’T TOUCH THE PHONE!”) “Is that Yurio?” In the background of the photo, the jacket of his gold suit discarded somewhere but his gold medal still twinkling around his neck, Yurio’s skulking around, a glass of half-finished champagne in his hand. I scroll through more of Phichit’s snaps, his eyes wobbling and widening and his teeth biting down on his knuckles as I abuse his no-touch rule. In the next shot Yurio’s in, his glass is empty, in a later one it’s full again – a new glass! I can’t find him after that.

“Victor!” My coach is sat on the floor with Chris after having beckoned a waiter over, taking it in turns to chug the new row of champagne glasses that are lined up between their splayed legs. “Yurio’s drinking.”

“Well one Yuri should be,” he pouts, taking another glass. (“Oh no, it’s empty. Our last friend has left us…”)

“Victor, he’s fifteen! He’s too young to -”

“Actually Yuri,” Chris chimes in, lolling forward so his chest is on the carpet and his naked buttcheeks are very much not, “in Spain the legal drinking age is sixteen, the little pussycat is practically there, and you can buy alcohol if you’re accompanied by a parent – where’s Yakov?”

“Last I heard he was in Yurio’s room, on his hands and knees with Lila,” Victor says, his tongue inside a dry glass as he tries to extract the last droplets of champagne from it.

“WHAT?!” A collective gasp. Phichit’s fingers twitch over his phone while I reconsider that lobotomy.

“Scraping up Yurio’s painting masterpiece of course. What on Earth did you two boys think I meant?” He’s grinning. He knew exactly what we thought he meant.

“What on Earth indeed. Is this silk?” Chris is stroking Victor’s tie, and I can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy. Okay, more than just a pang – a kind of skate-blade through the heart kind of jealousy. Phichit must realise because he gives me a wordless look. “Want me to split them up?” he says without opening his mouth. I do want him to, want him to launch himself in between them for ill-timed selfies, but Victor isn’t mine, and Chris is becoming more drunk and more horny and this is just what he’s like. Plus someone’s got to go and find our small gold medal winner before he does a me from last year. Surely his teeny tiny blond body can’t hold much champagne. I sigh very obviously. First stop Otabek. While I’m walking away, I hear Phichit sever Chris’s hold on the tie with a “say Grand Prix Final,” and I can’t help but smile.

“You should totally come stay in St Petersburg, if you don’t mind frostbite. I’m joking, you don’t get frostbite unless your ex-girlfriend locks you out of your own apartment barefoot and makes you scramble around in the snow trying to retrieve your belongings. I’m joking again, but if I wasn’t he deserved it-”

“Hey Otabek?” I tap his shoulder and there’s a look of relief etched on his face as I turn him away from Mila. Her gold medal’s still around his neck but now she’s not even subtly stroking his nipples through his shirt. “Have you seen Yurio?”

“Eurgh, why does everyone assume he’s seen Yurio?” Mila sighs, taking the opportunity to push her cleavage together while the Kazakhstani’s eyes are on me. “He’s not the kid’s keeper you know.”

“He’s not with you?” he asks, looking over to where I left Phichit sandwiched between Victor and his ex-whatever. Pretty sure he’s picked off more than he can chew though, as now Victor’s got his phone somehow and Phichit’s got Chris’s legs wrapped around his waist and just the one arm grasping around in the air for nothing like he’s the lone survivor of a shipwreck. There’s a pause while we all say a silent prayer for Phichit. The hero.

“I’ll keep looking,” I say after we’ve watched Phichit’s arm disappear underwater. Mila grabs Otabek’s bicep and spins him back towards her.

“So where were we on St Petersburg? Because Yakov always needs tutors to help with the kids in his Summer Camp after season’s over. You went to his Summer Camp, right?”

“I’d love to come stay in St Petersburg,” I hear Otabek say through a half-smile as I make my way back across the banquet hall. _I bet._

I check with Sala and Michele if they’ve seen him, but Sala’s already pretty drunk by now and she presses her breasts far too close to my face when she jumps to hug me. Far too close for my, or her 50% overprotective, 50% incestuous brother’s liking, and he rags her off me, but she just kind of falls – a deadweight – her knees buckled under her dress and her head resting on the closest thing to her which just happens to be my crotch…There’s a pause while Michele’s face goes the whitest shade of white a face can go without being in some stage of rigor mortis, or maybe it only looks so white, washed as it is under the offensive glare of a camera-flash. It’s not even Phichit – he’s still being molested by Chris. “Thanks Victor,” I hear him mutter, sticking a thumbs up out from the mass of smothering Swiss man. Victor smiles and waves.

I check with JJ if he’s seen him after I’ve extracted myself from the suggestive blowjob position and Emil’s carted Sala away, taking Michele’s white-faced rage with him. “What, lost the little princess have you?” he smirks, popping his hip and treating me to just one of his ‘Js’. His controversial bronze medal’s hung low around his neck, though it’s looking a few slicks of paint too gold to be bronze…

“Well, last time I saw her she was on her knees, sucking my -”

“JJ?”

“Oh! Hi Isabella, honey.” He wraps his arm around his fiancée’s shoulders, his sentence prudently left incomplete. Guess we’ll never know what Yurio was sucking. If I ever do find him though, I’m getting him a “15 today” banner to drape across his body.

“What’s going on?” Isabella asks, turning her sharp-cornered eyes towards me.

“Nothing, honey. Katsuki here’s just trying to act the responsible parent in his custody battle with his boyfriend.” I knew I shouldn’t have bothered asking JJ. “If you find the princess, let her know I’m dying to congratulate her on her win,” and with that he swaggers away, his fiancée laughing with him over a joke she’s lucky she doesn’t understand.

On my next loop of the room, a hand suddenly sticks out from under one of the tablecloths and drags me down under the table. I claw nail-grooves into the carpet to save myself, but everyone’s either too drunk or tall to notice the Japanese kid getting ingested by cheap cotton drapery.

It’s Yurio.

He’s squatting under the table, hidden from the room by the gauzy fabric, his shirt unkempt, his jacket long-gone, and his gold medal now a veritable scrunchie amidst tangled braids and knots.

“What the? Yurio?!” He puts his finger to his lips to shush me but actually it’s nowhere near his lips and closer to being halfway up his nose. It’s then that I notice the smorgasbord of tipped over champagne glasses he’s stashing in his little fortress of solitude. I was too late. He’s wasted.

“Do you remember the codeword, pork cutlet?” he whispers, though there is definitely no-one checking for us under a table.

“The what?”

“The codeword!” he snaps, grabbing my scalp with nails too sharp (“Ow!”) and pushing my ear to his mouth. “The codeword…” his voice goes even lower, “is onomatopoeia.”

 I have no fucking clue what he’s talking about.

“Codeword? Why do we need a codeword? And what’s onomatopoeia?!” He forgets that English is neither of our first languages.

“The codeword is needed,” is the cryptic response I get. “You can remember it, because it rhymes with GOLD MEDAL!”

…No it doesn’t.

He’s falls on his back hollering with laughter and thrashing his arms around like something wild. One falls straight onto an upturned glass and the smash makes him sit up immediately, suddenly alert.

“You hear that?” He’s talking quicker and with a thicker accent than usual.

“Yeah…”

He pushes us both forwards so our heads are poking out from under the table, the cloth wrapped tightly around our necks, two cotton-edged Madonnas of the skating community. No-one’s looking directly this way, a relief, since we most definitely look like idiots right now, though Yurio shuffles a potted anthurium plant in front of our faces, just to be sure.

“Onomatopoeia,” he mumbles under his breath. I repeat it back to him, like it’s some secret language we worked out earlier and it has any kind of meaning to either of us.

“Look,” he says, nodding through waxy green leaves towards Mila and her medal, “that’s my prize.” I remind him that his gold medal is playing bobby pin right now to whatever he’s done to his hair, but it occurs to me that it might not be the medal he’s talking about.

“They're onto us, pork cutlet. They’re trying to stop the skate.” _Gods if I could only stop this conversation._

“Yurio,” he won’t let me speak until I’ve said the ‘codeword.’ “Onomatopoeia. Yurio, maybe we should get you some water…”

“Water’s just wet ice, pork cutlet,” he says, deadpan serious. “Don’t forget the ice.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I did not mentally prepare myself tonight for a nonsensical quid-pro-quo with a drunken teenager with a mouth full of red flowers and a table-cloth wrapped around his champagne-smeared face.

“Onomatopoeia,” I start, trying to think of something to say, when suddenly Yakov hobbles into the room clutching his back and smeared with gold paint.

“YURATCHKA!” he bellows, and the whole room silences to look at him.

“Fuck,” Yurio spits, and leaning back towards my ear he whispers: “don’t forget the ice,” before scampering out on all fours from under the table and is gone, leaving me alone with the anthurium and cloth. At least now I finally see the cat references.

(“Ow, something just tore the back of my dress,” I hear Mila squeal as the room returns to normal.)

“Yuri, why are you squatting behind a plantpot?” Victor asks, leaning against on the tabletop I’m still under, a homing beacon for my humiliation.

_I honestly have no idea._


End file.
